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Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - Bill of Rights

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Preservation and Proposition

Our mission is to document the pivotal Second Amendment events that occurred in Frontier Mercersburg, and its environs, and to heighten awareness of the importance of these events in the founding of our Nation.

We are dedicated to the preservation of the place where the Second Amendment was "born" and to the proposition that the Second Amendment (the "right to bear arms") is the keystone of our Liberty and the Republic.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Female, off-duty D.C. cop shoots assailant, but the rest of us are sitting ducks

By Emily Miller - October 11, 2013 / The Washington Times
The District of Columbia is the only place in the country that refuses to abide by the constitutional mandate that individuals have the right to bear arms. The city is a playground for criminals because they know the law-abiding aren't armed. This week, however, one bad guy picked the wrong woman.

On Tuesday at 6:30 a.m., an off-duty, female police officer was getting out of her car on 18th Street, S.E. when a man approached her.

Metropolitan Police Department Spokesman Gwendolyn Crump told me that 28-year-old Marcus Young of Southeast indicated that he had a weapon while reaching in his waistband. Mr. Young threatened the officer and tried to rob her.The officer feared for her life, according to Ms. Crump, so she shot the suspect in the chest with her service weapon a Glock 17 in 9mm. The police will not identify the officer who joined the force last year.

Mr. Young was transported to a local hospital and treated for his injury. He was charged with assault with the intent to rob.

If I had shot a bad guy who said he had a gun and would kill me, the cops would have thrown me in jail. But since the police are allowed to carry off duty, the officer was placed on administrative leave with pay, which is standard. The investigation is being handled by the police department's Internal Affairs Division.

However, the police took back the officer�s firearm. Ms. Crump told me this is routine in Use of Force investigations. Police sources say that is not accurate, and that the norm is for the officer's gun to be taken into custody for evidence, but the officer is given a replacement weapon.

While the specifics of this case are being investigated, the larger issue is that anyone else in this situation would not be able to defend him or herself because there are no carry rights.

For the full year in 2012, robberies with a gun in D.C. were up 18 percent and assaults with a gun increased 12 percent over 2011. So far this year, homicides are up 17 percent, assaults with a gun are up 5 percent and sexual assaults are up 2 percent.

The anti-gun groups and liberal media proclaim that allowing citizens to carry guns will lead to Wild West shootouts. That is only the case on TV and in Hollywood movies.

The number of concealed carry permit holders in the United States has risen dramatically in recent years, to over eight million today. At the same time, gun crime has fallen to half of what it was 20 years ago. This shows that, at minimum, law-abiding citizens exercising their Second Amendment right to bear arms does not lead to more gun crimes.

At best, it shows that there is a deterrent factor in carry rights because the bad guys don't know who might have a gun. This makes it more likely they will target people in cities like D.C., Chicago and New York City where the good guys are not armed.

In this case, the criminal just had the bad luck to target one of the armed 3,800 D.C. police out of a city of 600,000 residents. Perhaps his buddies will now think twice before threatening to kill another woman.

This summer, Illinois became the last state to legalize concealed carry rights after a federal appeals court ruled it is unconstitutional not to allow citizens to bear arms. This leaves the nation's capital as the only place in America where you can't carry a gun legally.

The D.C. city council has been adamant that it will not allow carry rights. The only way for the nation's capital to abide by the Constitution is for either Congress, which has oversight of all laws, to require it in exchange for approving its bills or for the courts to rule on it.

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It All Started Here . . .

Frontier Mercersburg in 1765 was the "birthplace" of the right we now refer to as "the Second Amendment", or, "the right to bear arms". It was here that individuals for the first time, some would say divinely, embraced the link between "Life and Liberty". . . and struck the first blow for Freedom.

Historically the right to bear arms goes back even before our founding as a nation to the Glorious Revolution of 1689 when William III agreed to the English Bill of Rights. If one can look at revolution like a volcanic eruption in nature, you understand that often from the destruction come the seeds of new human values and beliefs. In this case the independence of the human spirit, the right to know God for oneself, and to trust your conscience was hard won in this revolution of the human soul.

One crucible begets the necessity for another and on the frontier in America the right to defend ones religious beliefs was becoming the right to participate in the decisions of government that impact my "self". Freedom of the soul was becoming freedom of the heart and mind. Smith's Rebellion began as an act they justified under the rubric of defending oneself because government had failed in its obligation to protect Life, Liberty and Property. This was the first assertion of this principle aimed directly at British Military Authority as well as the incompetent government of John Penn - anywhere in the colonies.

In the end, Smith's Rebellion was the first armed resistance against British Military Rule leading up to the American Revolution. It was the first American triumph over the best military force in the world. It was the first time upon defending oneself that Americans had proclaimed we can rule ourselves.

It would be ten years before the battles at Lexington and Concord.

...Let Them Take Arms

The "Right to Bear Arms" . . .or 2nd Amendment is one of the most discussed and contentious of all the amendments of the Bill of Rights. It is, in fact, the only amendment that contains not only the seeds but the actual instruments of the revolution itself. Further, it gives real affirmation to Thomas Jefferson's quote . . .

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

It is for this reason, if no other, that the Government and its functionaries vociferously assail and obfuscate the text of this simple assertion. More, it is for this reason, and in the face of the perennial onslaught that its defense and affirmation is essential to the survival of the republic.

Frontier Mercersburg & The Justice William Smith House

The frontier town of Mercersburg, PA. in the 1760's, although typical of many settlements along the Appalachian Mountains played a pivotal role in the creation of what was to become the "Bill of Rights".

Frontiersmen like James Smith and the Black Boys, many of whom were inhabitants of the Mercersburg environs, were early participants in a series of conflicts with the British government that established principles the eventually lead to the inclusion of the "right to bear arms" in the Bill of Rights.

Much of the focus, centers on the domicile (and likely place of business) of Justice William Smith.